Stamping Ground

This film documents the - to the Dutch at least - legendary Holland Pop Festival, held in Rotterdam over the weekend of 26-28 June, 1970. Directly inspired by the then groundbreaking Woodstock Music & Arts Fair (speaking of legends...), the Holland Pop Festival (aka Kralingen, after the neighborhood in whose forest it set camp in) offered the same picture of peace, music and love, with a cast of 60,000 hippies enjoying a hazy and heady weekend of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. That last-named ingredient was provided in spades by a.o. The Byrds, Dr. John The Nighttripper, Jefferson Airplane, Pink Floyd and Santana, augmented by hip Dutch bands like C.C.C. Inc., Dream and Ekseption. And of course there raged a thunderstorm.